THE Straits Times reports today, that Telcos are giving out carrots to consumers, to lock them in ahead of what could be industry's biggest shake-up years. On Tuesday, the Government unveiled its tenders for a partially subsidised, ultra-fast broadband network (Next-Generation National Broadband) aimed at opening up the market to more companies. This actually means fiercer competition, better offerings to customer, more innovation, in another words, consumers win!
Quoted from Straits Times:
"Faced with a duel on home turf, local telcos have been digging in, and fighting back. Their strategy: bundle a 'triple-play' of phone, broadband and TV services, so users won't be so easily swayed by new offers, say experts.
StarHub, for example, is now giving free LCD TV sets to people who sign up for its cellphone, broadband and pay-TV services. Subscribers also get monthly discounts for each service that range from 5 to 15 per cent.
Rival SingTel has a similar ploy. Subscribers of its Generation mio suite of fixed line, cellphone and broadband services can save up to 20 per cent each month. They also get another 5 per cent off pay-TV programmes.
Senior analyst Marc Einstein, from consultancy firm Pyramid Research, said the telcos will only get more aggressive in bundling their services and giving freebies to lock in users. While this benefits consumers in the short term, it may also discourage new market entrants that would have offered more choices in the long term, he noted.
The Government is prepared to pump in up to $750 million into the new ultra-fast broadband network. This would help defray the cost of building it, estimated by industry sources to be between $1 billion and $2 billion.
The Government hopes that, with lower overheads, more companies would come forward to offer services like tele-medicine, for example.
Besides bundles, local telcos have plans to upgrade their networks - even if they do not win the tender to build the Next-Generation National Broadband Network, which is expected to cover at least half the country by 2012. The whole island should be connected by 2015.
StarHub, for example, has said it can boost speeds on its cable modem service from the current 100 megabits per second to 1 gigabit per second in the future - the speed that the new network is said to provide. SingTel, meanwhile, has hinted of plans to use new fibre optic cables instead of the current copper phone wires to hook up homes to the Net. Using light instead of electrical pulses, fibre optic cables can offer almost infinite capacity for future Internet services. MobileOne, is also not standing still. Its chief executive officer Neil Montefiore said in an earlier interview that it would spend $40 million to $60 million on a fibre optic 'backbone' to offer faster broadband services in the future. "
I think Next-gen Broadband is going to create a Tsunami. It is creating a hype among the telcos even before it is launch. The intensity of the competition will for sure benefits the consumers, but really? Some observers doubt so. A blog from Techie Talks is skeptical about the new development. It talks about the problem that will be faced by the IDA in their plan for the National Broadband Network (NBN). Well that's remains to be seen. Hopefully, we can really get the real High Speed Broadband by 2012.
Previously,
Singapore ready for Broadband 2.0?
HK telco eyes Singapore next-gen broadband
IDA studies next-gen Internet applications.
SingTel high-speed Internet Trials
Flickr Photo by Qualialab
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